dperry Posted October 24, 2008 Share Posted October 24, 2008 Sounds like the first one is a keeper and the concept is a gem. Some may balk at $14 a month but I go by the stop and $28 is worth it. Might kick it up to a Vista 450 and maybe get more. Are you using 10mm or 12mm gumballs? I was thinking of swapping out the big seller for a 450 just like you said, and using 1080ct gum. I use 850ct right now. I think I am going to switch out all my gumballs to 1080, regardless of whether it's 2-for-1, 25c or 10c vends. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dperry Posted October 24, 2008 Share Posted October 24, 2008 dperry wrote: And yet, I can still compete with other candy/gumball vendors. I can sell 2for1 gumballs, or I can try my new idea and sell gumballs for a dime, instead of a quarter. But once I force the competition out of the location, I'll be going back to one for a quarter. I am interested if you ever tried the .10 route. I have been thinking of doing this for some time and have finally acquired about 15 dime mechs. Was going to use a 4" .10 sticker and the 15mm gum and vend 1 per dime, just kind of a nostalgia thing but if it works the profit margin would be great. Gross of $365 compared to $212 with the 1" at .25 . This would require more sales, but who can tell, each person might vend twice. I've considered putting out doubles; each head with the same gumballs, but one head would be 2-for-1 and one head would be 10c vends. I figure that somebody who doesn't have a dime would buy the 2-for-1 for a quarter, and the one that didn't have a quarter would buy one for a dime. But who knows? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dperry Posted December 8, 2008 Share Posted December 8, 2008 Sounds like the first one is a keeper and the concept is a gem. Some may balk at $14 a month but I go by the stop and $28 is worth it. Might kick it up to a Vista 450 and maybe get more. Are you using 10mm or 12mm gumballs? I have switched this location from a vista 300 to a vista 450 with 1080c gumballs. We will see how well it does now. Anything I can do to maximize the amount of money from each location should be worth it. I noticed that the other vendor only had about 1/4 or less missing. while mine was almost empty. I don't know if that has anything to do with anything cuz he could have serviced his machine last week for all I know. Anyways, if it continues to be good, I may make it a double and add candy as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ROGERS VENDING Posted January 30, 2009 Share Posted January 30, 2009 I am struggling to understand some things about this approach. When you break down a double it requires another location. If you have 500 locations now you will need 1000 by the time you are done. Is the simplicity worth the extra time or expense involved in obtaining these new locations? What about drive time and expenses involved in doubling your route size for the same income? It seems like you are increasing your overhead and decreasing your profit margin. There are alot of factors that could mitigate the expense like lower inventory costs and less spoilage but is it worth it? I'm not trying to be negative but I just want to understand. My plan calls for maximizing locations and upgrading to more machines to maximize profits and minimize stops on the route. I may be over optimistic or misguided though so I want to evaluate this strategy. Thanks for any input BINGO! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dperry Posted February 1, 2009 Share Posted February 1, 2009 Ok, so most of you know that I am branching out from single gumballs to doubles with GB and candy. I've changed out 3 locations now so I now have some data. Location 1: Single Gumballs only: $0.69/dy Double GB and Skittls: $0.69/d Translation: No additional income. It seems that the sale of the skittles took away from the sales of the gumballs. I am now tying up another head that can be gather more quarters elsewhere and having to buy more product. Location 2: Single Gumballs only: $0.43/dy Double GB and Skittles: $0.50/dy Translation: 14% increase in sales. I might have to question whether or not this warrants the additional $4.50 it got for the month. I can get a single gumball location that does more than the increase in income provided in this case. Location 3: Single Gumball only: $0.40/dy Double GB and Runts: $0.99/dy This seems much more positive although there were more GB sales than there were runts sales. I might keep this location as a double. But if the others don't perform better, then I'll be breaking them up again. Or I might just take out the GB and try candy only and see where that takes me. Obviously, this only applies to the candy locations, and not the capsule/toys locations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caserri Posted February 1, 2009 Author Share Posted February 1, 2009 Darryl, Are you reporting in the revenue section of member PLUS as well? Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lurtsman Posted February 1, 2009 Share Posted February 1, 2009 Darryl, What kind of locations are you placing these gumball machines in? I have a hard time finding places to put out single gumball machines, and I'd like to have significantly more of them. I'm finding for the sake of inventory control it's important to be able to turn your stock over fast. It may even be worth giving a high commission to get into some premium locations so I can use them to move anything that is past half it's shelf life. Where do those gumball machines go ^^? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dperry Posted February 1, 2009 Share Posted February 1, 2009 Darryl, What kind of locations are you placing these gumball machines in? I have a hard time finding places to put out single gumball machines, and I'd like to have significantly more of them. I'm finding for the sake of inventory control it's important to be able to turn your stock over fast. It may even be worth giving a high commission to get into some premium locations so I can use them to move anything that is past half it's shelf life. Where do those gumball machines go ^^? Location #1 is a tortillaria. It's just a little place that all they do is make tortilla's. It's usually a good spot. Location #2 is an independant Automotive Service location Location #3 is a tattoo parlor. The owner of the tattoo place requested to have runts since those were his favorites. I have other tattoo parlors that said they would rather have the gum than the candy because the people can't smoke there so they like to chew the gum instead. Then again I tried to place a gumball machine in yet another tattoo parlor and they said they didn't like the gum because of all the stains outside the store. It just goes to show how every location is different. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dperry Posted February 1, 2009 Share Posted February 1, 2009 Darryl, Are you reporting in the revenue section of member PLUS as well? Steve Well, I can't. There's no poll for January nor Feburary yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quarter Master Posted February 2, 2009 Share Posted February 2, 2009 Darryl, 1.Go to the Member's Plus Section 2.Click on Vending Revenue Reports 3.Pick your venue(Bulk,Full Line,etc.) 4.In upper r/h corner hit New Topic 5.In the subject line put your business name 6.Post your revenue in the body. Hope this info helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dperry Posted March 2, 2009 Share Posted March 2, 2009 Sigh. I had another service run this weekend. I had one location where I had gumballs that was doing very well at about $42ish a month. I added a second head with 1" caps of NFL stickers. I'm astonished to find that after 28 days, this setup did only $40. I also have this one location that did about $6/mo with a single gumball setup. I took out that single and put in a mini rack with 2 1" caps with stick mix and Monkey'n Around, and a 2" cap with glow cross neckaces. This time it took in $22 for a 56 day cycle. Yeah, that's a pretty big increase in sales, but is it worth the increased expendature? So now I have is 5 different locations where I've increased the total number of products being sold, and 3 of them have not had any significant increase in sales. I've burned up greater resouces, ie extra machines and more product, but I have not seen any real return on my investments. What this shows me is that some locations have only so many quarters to vend. It doesn't matter if you have 1 or 10 different products, you will likely only get the same amount of income. Over the weekend, I've taken 4 of my single locations and increased them to doubles, plus I've added 1 new location with a double. I will be watching these new locations and all my other 'multiple product' locations quite closely. I may end up cutting this experiment short and pull several of my doubles and redistributing them as singles. But for now I'm thinking that it's more lucrative to be doing either a single product, or many with a rack with little or no middle ground for doubles or triples. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lurtsman Posted March 2, 2009 Share Posted March 2, 2009 Interesting findings dperry. I think the middle ground exists, but it depends entirely on the location. Break rooms are an area where I think the double or triple will increase sales. It's good to remember exactly which people your machine is selling to. Your 1 inch caps and gumballs have a similar market. Now if my gumballs did 40$, I'd assume the spot was hot and that it would merit expansion. If the toys aren't working though, you might try another snack food in that location, or stickers/tattoos. (40$ in a regular machine for gumballs IMO is pretty studly) As for the 6$/month location. It doesn't surprise me that it didn't explode. 6$/month says there aren't enough children having access to your machine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dperry Posted April 26, 2010 Share Posted April 26, 2010 Well its been over a year since your experiment...any interesting findings?Well, the mini-rack location that did $22 in 56 days is long gone. It never did anything better than that.But I think that singles or doubles are still the way to go. When when I do doubles, then one is prolly going to be a 1" toy capsule. I have a few locations now where I have doubles with either gumballs and toys, or gumballs and one type of candy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dperry Posted September 1, 2010 Share Posted September 1, 2010 I've started to do some more candy lately. I want to get into some locations that would do better with candy than with gb/toys. I've had many reversals of late; I've lost a few rack locations, as well as some single locations. I've got about 15 heads sitting in my garage that need a home so I'm getting Eddie to find me some locs so I can stop this reversal. BTW, I no longer have any 10c gum locations. I pulled that last machine (or what was left of it) when the loc got burglarized for the 2nd time. Although, I'm not against using 10c gum as another competition device. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nepavend Posted September 1, 2010 Share Posted September 1, 2010 Doing all single gumballs can be a big timesaver, however you have to consider that someone will be coming behind you and placing with toys/candy or even more gum. This will be more likely to happen to you so I would suggest sticking with all doubles in new locations as much as possible with a gum and toy as a baseline. Unless you have a big restaurant, pizza place, or chinese buffet doubles should suffice until you gauge how you are doing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dperry Posted September 1, 2010 Share Posted September 1, 2010 Doing all single gumballs can be a big timesaver, however you have to consider that someone will be coming behind you and placing with toys/candy or even more gum. This will be more likely to happen to you so I would suggest sticking with all doubles in new locations as much as possible with a gum and toy as a baseline. Unless you have a big restaurant, pizza place, or chinese buffet doubles should suffice until you gauge how you are doing. Certainly. Single gumballs are only a starting point. I've place commission racks in locations that totally didn't deserve the hardware. It sucks to have to downgrade a location. It's better to know how good a location can do before you place the rack. If a location does well after one or two cycles on gumballs, then I'm all over the owner trying to upgrade to a commission rack. On the other hand, it is for certain that an office break room is not going to do any business with toys. I don't think vendors gumballprince is going to come in behind me and put in a commission rack. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jax Snacks Posted September 1, 2010 Share Posted September 1, 2010 Not sure if gumballs is always an accurate gauge for upgrading a location. I have some great rack locations, but the gumballs suck in some of them and have been removed. So if I had started with just gumballs in those spots, I may have avoided the upgrade. So it may be better to start with a least a double with gumballs plus a toy to help gauge the potential a little better. My 2 cents of how I like to start out this way: Doubles (Adults) - (Candy, Gumball) Breakrooms, adult locations or locations where I want to place a "marker" and see what happens. Doubles (Kids) - (Toy, Gumball) For space limited locations, charity spots with kids or to test out a potential future rack or concerns about the location's security or survival. Triple Head Mini Rack (Sticker, Toy, Gumball) - Smaller traffic locations or commission location that needs to be tested out first. Five Head Rack - (Sticker, 2 inch Toy, Two 1 inch Toys and Gum) - Basic setup for "standard" locations like pizza joints, restaurants. Of course there are exceptions and special circumstances for any given location and not always a right or wrong. And it's simply a starting point in some cases. Another thing to consider is that the gumball wars seem to be heating up as more vendors adopt that model. I see two, sometimes three single gumball heads in some locations. Usually one will convert to 2-for-1 and the rest soon follow. I have also heard from another vendor that one guy is even doing 3-for-1 now! Nothing like grown men fighting for gumball superiority! What's next, gumballs for a nickel? Let the fun begin! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bostonvendor27 Posted September 2, 2010 Share Posted September 2, 2010 There's a vendor in my area that is in all the pizza shops. He fills a single NW big boy to the top, puts a '' free slice of pizza with a black gumball'' sign and gives 30% to the owners. I share a couple of locations with him and I would guess he services them once every 4 or 5 months. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lak20019 Posted September 2, 2010 Share Posted September 2, 2010 I have also heard from another vendor that one guy is even doing 3-for-1 now! Nothing like grown men fighting for gumball superiority! What's next, gumballs for a nickel? Let the fun begin! I saw the 3-for-1 at a local supermarket the other day besting the 2-for-1 next to it. The 3-for-1 was almost empty and the other one was completely full, so it might be working (depending on their service cycles). I was stunned to see that. I really don't want to get in the middle of that war lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bostonvendor27 Posted September 2, 2010 Share Posted September 2, 2010 from a consumer standpoint I think a three for one gumball wheel might be a little overkill! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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